


bleed

by nauticalwarrior



Category: Overlord - Maruyama Kugane & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:42:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22995628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nauticalwarrior/pseuds/nauticalwarrior
Summary: after her betrayal, shalltear hurts.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	bleed

**Author's Note:**

> what on earth possessed me to write this

Shalltear watches the water drip from the faucet, almost invisible in the darkness. Each hits the bathwater with a soft  _ plink _ , sending dark ripples across the surface of the water. Shalltear can see perfectly fine, even with all of the lights off, and the warm water wrapped around her doesn’t stop her from feeling cold. It’s a part of being undead, she supposes. She’s cold, she’s dead, and she can see in the dark. She leans further back in the bath, letting her hair fan out under the water. She can’t see behind her head, even with her superior vampiric vision, but she can feel the water. 

Shalltear shuts her eyes, lets her face fall below the water. It’s like slipping into a warm bed, sheets and fabric warmed by body heat, the smooth touch of silk against living skin. Not that she knows from experience, but she’s spoken to more than enough living creatures to get the concept. One advantage she has over humans is that she doesn’t need to breathe nearly as much as they would. She floats under the surface of the water for perhaps a little bit longer than she should, letting the warmth soak into her skin. 

She pulls herself up out of the water, listens to the water fall back into the bath with a soft splashing sound. She opens her eyes, almost surprised to see how dark it is in the bathroom. She’d forgotten the lights were out. Leaning over, she pulls the chain that opens the bath, letting the water drain away. She’s colder, now, with the water falling off her skin and dripping down to her feet. She wraps herself in a soft towel and walks out of the bathroom, her feet leaving a trail of watery footprints and her hair streaming cold water down her back. 

Shalltear sits on her bed, the embroidered quilt scratchy under her bare skin. It’s funny, that this quilt is so beautiful and yet so horrible to actually use. It’s sewn through with pretty reds and blacks, in a pattern depicting roses and ivy growing all over the quilt, with silver for accent. That’s probably what makes it so uncomfortable on the surface, Shalltear thinks. It makes sense.

She’s stalling. Wasting time. That’s all she’s been doing lately, anyway. It’s not like she has anything better to do, not until she’s “recovered” from what she did. She as well as the other guardians know perfectly well that she’s physically recovered in every possible sense. There’s no excuse for why she’s been so  _ useless _ as of late, but.

She can’t make herself actually  _ do _ anything. Whenever she tries, when she tells herself that today she’ll go up to Lord Ainz, she’ll tell him she’s ready for his orders, that she’s recovered, she just freezes up instead, her muscles tightening under her skin and locking her jaw shut. She can’t even get out of her room, most of the time, let alone to Lord Ainz’ throne room. Instead, she sits down and buries her face in her hands, waits until she feels like she could maybe drown herself in a toilet, then goes to the bar and pretends she can get drunk to any degree that matters. 

It’s not helping, though. She can fake being black-out drunk and pretend to be hungover all she wants, but it doesn’t actually do much in the way of numbing her feelings. Her  _ feelings _ . She’s a vampire, for fuck’s sake. A guardian of the Tomb of Nazarick. And she’s sitting around moping because she  _ feels bad. _ How pathetic. 

Shalltear stares at her hands, at the unblemished, smooth skin of her arms. It’s not fair that she feels like this, yet she’s completely healed on the outside. It would be easier for her to deal with it if it was purely a physical injury that prevented her from serving her lord. But of course, she’s unmarked, unscarred. Her nails aren’t even broken, even after all of that fighting that she doesn’t remember. Why is she so upset over something she can’t even remember?

Shalltear presses the nail of her pinkie against the soft skin on her forearm, feeling the sharp edge dig into the skin. She wonders if her fingernail alone is sharp enough to cut her skin, to rip flesh and draw blood. She draws her nail across her forearm, feels the bite and watches the cut that appears, slowly filling with wine-red blood. It’s interesting to see her blood in this setting, when she’s warm and clean from a bath, sitting on her bed wrapped in a soft towel. The blood beads up along the wound, rolling down the side of her arm. 

She brings her arm up to her mouth and catches the drop of blood before it drips off onto the bed. The metallic taste is both familiar and comforting, but it doesn’t have the same draw to it that another person’s blood would have. It still tastes nice, though.

Shalltear digs the tip of her nail back into her skin, over a new, clean portion of her arm. It stings the way it did the first time, but she feels strangely calm as the blood wells up from the wound. It’s soothing, watching herself bleed like so many others have. This time, she cups her arm with her other hand, squeezing her skin so the blood beads up faster, running down onto the underside of her arm, gathering there in a row of droplets. 

She feels the blood against her fingertips, slick and cool to the touch, because not even her blood is warm. It’s strange to her, since blood is usually something so warm, hot even. She gets to feel blood in battle, rushing over her, filling her with energy and knitting her wounds back together into fresh, unmarked skin. She gets to feel it during sex, too, most of the time, but not like this, not in the cool and quiet of her room.

She wipes her arm off with the towel, letting it soak up the blood. It smears dark red across her skin, like it’s staining the flesh there, but she’s too tired to care. How strange that is, being tired. She’s felt it more lately than ever, as if being resurrected left a need for eternal sleep that her body had never known before. It’s okay, though, she thinks, as she pulls the towel away and checks to see if the wounds have stopped bleeding. They’re filled with blood, but not beading up or pouring over, so she drops the towel to the ground and curls up on her bed, cradling her arm to her chest. Tomorrow, she’ll drink a healing potion from her stash and wash away the cuts, but just for tonight, she’ll let herself bleed.


End file.
